250 EVERSLEY GARDENS 



off the fated tree as the bolt glanced and turned 

 and then the death shriek, and the stagger, 

 and the heavy fall of the stalwart forester 

 and the bow dropping from the old man's 

 hands, and the blood sinking to his heart in 

 one chilling rush, and his glorious features 

 collapsing into that look of changeless and 

 rigid sorrow, which haunted me in the portrait 

 upon the wall from childhood. ... It is 

 strange that this is almost the only portrait 

 saved in the wreck of our family. As I sat 

 under the tree there seemed to be a solemn 

 and remorseful moan in the long branches, 

 mixed with the airy whisper of the lighter 

 leaves that told of present as well as past." 



In those charming forest sketches, "Sous 

 Bois," Andre Theuriet truly says, " On re- 

 devient sauvage a Todeur des bois." And to 

 those who are forest-born and forest-bred there 

 is no nostalgia so poignant as absence from a 

 forest land, no enchantment so great as the 

 " return of the native " and the first breath of 

 the wild woods. To those whose happy fate 

 it has been to live from childhood in such a 



